Vermont has voted to call a Constitutional Convention.

[frigidmagi]

Vtdigger.org

On Friday Vermont became the first state to call for a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which precipitated a flood of cash into politics.

Mike Monetta, 37, drove from Boston with a colleague and spent more than 10 hours Thursday in the House gallery waiting for the lower chamber to vote on the Senate-passed resolution, which — as lawmakers race to wrap things up before the end of the biennium — was taken up at the end of a marathon floor session.

He was back in the gallery Friday morning to see Vermont’s resolution get final approval from the House. Monetta is the organizing director for Wolf PAC, which he described as a political action committee to end all political action committees.

“We exist for only one purpose and that’s to get a 28th amendment to get all money out of politics,” he explained.

Wolf PAC was founded by Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks online newscast.

“(Uygur) has this thing where in almost every story he keeps coming back to ‘whoever has more money wins,’” Monetta said. “But he didn’t want to just be negative, he wanted there to be a way to fix it.”

Legal challenges are an unlikely solution, as the Supreme Court has set precedent in a number of cases that equates money with free speech, Monetta said.

There are only two ways to amend the U.S. Constitution, either through an act of Congress ratified by the states or by a convention of states acting on their own.

Wolf PAC concluded that the federal government is too awash in campaign cash from outside groups to take action, so the organization is launching campaigns to push state legislatures to call for an end to corporate personhood and public financing of all elections, according to the organization’s website.

There are 10 states currently considering similar resolutions to the one passed by Vermont, according to Monetta. It would take 34 states to trigger a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution, and 38 to approve an amendment.

States could appoint delegates that are local or statewide officeholders, or a state could choose to elect its delegates. Forty-nine states have passed resolutions calling for a convention to propose some 700 different amendments.

Earlier in the session it appeared there was no appetite in Montpelier for such a resolution, but a call to Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, from one of his constituents got the ball rolling, he said.

“Dr. Steven Barry is a minister in Manchester,” Sears said. “He contacted me, and I’ve known him for several years, and we talked about it, and the more I heard, it made sense to me.”

Sears said he decided to put the resolution back on the “fast track” by holding hearings on the topic and eventually bringing it to the Senate floor for a vote where it passed 25-2.

“I think it’s an important resolution,” Sears said. “Congress isn’t going to act, and we’ve got to do something to get this country back under control.”

When the resolution crossed over to the House side and a hearing was held in the Government Operations Committee, S. Burlington farmer Benjamin Brown made an emotional plea to lawmakers to be the first state to call for a convention.

“What am I going to tell my children, what am I going to be able to say to them about this democracy?” Brown asked lawmakers.

“Vermont has an opportunity to lead right now … it’s not left and right, it’s an issue of democracy,” he said. “Please allow the conversations to happen.”

Days later, the House followed the Senate and passed JRS 27, becoming the first state to call for a convention to amend the Constitution by reversing the Citizens United decision.

Several lawmakers raised concerns that the scope of a convention could not be limited and participating states could bring forward amendments for discussion that many would find unpalatable, such as outlawing abortion.

But those concerns did not dampen the House’s enthusiasm and the resolution passed 95-43.

“I see this resolution as an opportunity to kick-start a movement that I hope will spread throughout the country and let people become aware of the real problems we have with the influence of money on elections and on our public policy,” said Rep. Mike Yantachka, D-Charlotte.

Calling a Constitutional Convention can be dangerous, as once convened almost anything is on the floor. That said, you need a shitload of support to get anything passed so the danger isn't say up there with a loaded gun in the hands of a toddler levels.

[rhoenix]

In watching this whole thing develop on the Young Turks Youtube channel, their aim is to get this sort of thing started across all fifty states. They were downright euphoric when it passed both houses of Vermont, especially with the numbers it did.

This has potential to go terribly awry, I won't even lie to myself about that. However, it also has the potential to change how politics and money interact in the US in a positive way. It will be interesting to watch as it develops further.

That Vermont happened like this is one hell of a win for their movement, true - but there's also 49 to go.

[frigidmagi]

Vermont isn't a big win. It's a small rather liberal state with no real pull. Still by just having one state do it, the idea is out there and on the table now.

[rhoenix]

Vermont isn't a big win. It's a small rather liberal state with no real pull. Still by just having one state do it, the idea is out there and on the table now.

Exactly - I stated that this was a "big win" for them in the respect that I don't think they were expecting results this early, or in quite this dramatic a fashion.

[Josh]

Ain't gonna happen. A constitutional convention is tantamount to dissolving the current government lock stock and barrel.

That was more palatable when the constitution was being drafted because that's what the guys at the convention were essentially doing (beyond the remit given to them by the Confederation, no less.)

But now that there are a couple hundred years worth of institution built up, no. I mean, you're talking about redrafting the entire federal infrastructure at this point.

Plus I flat-out don't trust the current generation to construct a new constitution that wouldn't be utterly retarded. The era in which the constitution was drafted was a very weird and unique moment in history, when you had a revolutionary generation with a shitload of experience in forming new governments (remember that every state at that point had drafted its own constitution, often with vigorous debates) and the folks participating were highly educated.

Furthermore, contrary to the deification the constitution now receives, it was regarded at the time as an unpalatable compromise that basically satisfied nobody and did indeed plant the seeds for the worst and most brutal war in American history.

Is it creaking and groaning and growing increasingly obsolete? Sure. But it's better than the visible alternatives.

[rhoenix]

Ain't gonna happen. A constitutional convention is tantamount to dissolving the current government lock stock and barrel.

That was more palatable when the constitution was being drafted because that's what the guys at the convention were essentially doing (beyond the remit given to them by the Confederation, no less.)

But now that there are a couple hundred years worth of institution built up, no. I mean, you're talking about redrafting the entire federal infrastructure at this point.

Plus I flat-out don't trust the current generation to construct a new constitution that wouldn't be utterly retarded. The era in which the constitution was drafted was a very weird and unique moment in history, when you had a revolutionary generation with a shitload of experience in forming new governments (remember that every state at that point had drafted its own constitution, often with vigorous debates) and the folks participating were highly educated.

Furthermore, contrary to the deification the constitution now receives, it was regarded at the time as an unpalatable compromise that basically satisfied nobody and did indeed plant the seeds for the worst and most brutal war in American history.

Is it creaking and groaning and growing increasingly obsolete? Sure. But it's better than the visible alternatives.

My understanding of their aims here is that they intend to get a new amendment to the US Constitution (specifically for political financing), and leave the rest of the Constitution alone.

[White Haven]

That's what they aim to get out of it. But in a full national constitutional convention, you don't just get to work with the people you agree with. That's why everyone's afraid of them; the gun nuts are afraid that the Second Amendment will be up for grammatical correction, the ACLU is terrified that the religious right will go after the First, etcetera etcetera. All of a sudden the constitutional basis for previous legal battles go up in smoke. Legal precedent set around anything that gets edited no longer matters. Change one word in any amendment and all of a sudden every legal ruling that ever used that amendment as its basis is up for a re-do.

When Congress adds an amendment, that's one thing. It's very tightly controlled. A constitutional convention...everyone has everything to lose, and no guarantee of even gaining what they wanted in the first place. It's an incredibly risky thing to do, and as such only really worth doing if you want a whole shitload of things changed and are willing to live with the fallout. Calling for a convention so you can change one thing is...no. Just no.

[rhoenix]

That's what they aim to get out of it. But in a full national constitutional convention, you don't just get to work with the people you agree with. That's why everyone's afraid of them; the gun nuts are afraid that the Second Amendment will be up for grammatical correction, the ACLU is terrified that the religious right will go after the First, etcetera etcetera. All of a sudden the constitutional basis for previous legal battles go up in smoke. Legal precedent set around anything that gets edited no longer matters. Change one word in any amendment and all of a sudden every legal ruling that ever used that amendment as its basis is up for a re-do.

When Congress adds an amendment, that's one thing. It's very tightly controlled. A constitutional convention...everyone has everything to lose, and no guarantee of even gaining what they wanted in the first place. It's an incredibly risky thing to do, and as such only really worth doing if you want a whole shitload of things changed and are willing to live with the fallout. Calling for a convention so you can change one thing is...no. Just no.

How would they achieve their aims (that of preventing massive amounts of money going into politics; e.g. going back to stricter public campaigning) better, in your view?

I agree with you in that such a convention can be dangerous, but from my reading of things, there's no real other way to achieve their goals.

[Josh]

I don't know if there is a way under the current structure of things. How can you prevent money from unduly influencing politics without mashing the 1st Amendment into the ground?

Also

the gun nuts

smile when you say that, son.

[White Haven]

Face it, kiddo, the pro-gun faction is all about hiding in a fold in grammar in that amendment.

[Josh]

Face it, kiddo, the pro-gun faction is all about hiding in a fold in grammar in that amendment.

A: I can discourse at length about this and the construction of that sentence. The militia statement is prefatory, not conditional.

B: If you're going to take a 'the people' statement in the amendment and collectivize it, that has very, very nasty implications in other places, especially with regards to the first amendment.

C: I give very wicked noogies.

[Lys]

How would they achieve their aims (that of preventing massive amounts of money going into politics; e.g. going back to stricter public campaigning) better, in your view? I agree with you in that such a convention can be dangerous, but from my reading of things, there's no real other way to achieve their goals.

Call for for an amendment instead of a convention. In fact, that is the single best way to achieve their goals. They want to change one thing, that's what amendments are for. Calling a Convention is for when you want to tear down the whole edifice and start over. Though, I do believe people who actually wrote the Constitution expected that a Convention would be called every few decades. Indeed most extant Constitutions find themselves periodically rewritten. It was perhaps an accident of history that the American one has stayed mostly intact, with only the occasional amendment, but on the whole this seems to have brought a lot of stability to the American law and judiciary bodies.

Face it, kiddo, the pro-gun faction is all about hiding in a fold in grammar in that amendment.

They cleaned up the grammar in the Confederate Constitution, and to me it looks removing the two extra commas makes it sound more pro-gun, not less. Just take a look, this is the original: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Cleaned up version: "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

The third comma of the original version separates "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" and "shall not be infringed", which I think gives some interpretation wiggle room for emphasizing the militia angle. Take that at away and it suddenly sounds far more declarative and straightforward on the infringing not being allowed. Whereas the first and second commas are only there to prevent a run-on sentence, but only the second is strictly needed for that purpose, you can take or leave the first one. They don't change the meaning of statement at all, only the third comma introduces ambiguity, and it's in favour of stricter gun regulation.

[frigidmagi]

Let me step right in here and explain a couple things.

There are two ways to get an amendment out there for voting:

Get 2/3rds of the House and the Senate to pass it.
Get 2/3rds of the state governments to call a convention.

Afterwards, 3/4ths of the state governments must approve it.

Up til now, every one of the 27 amendments was passed by Congress (the last time was in 1992, the amendment stated that while Congress could give itself a raise whenever it wanted, the raise didn't go into effect until after the next election). It has been made pretty clear that the current crop of Congress critters have no intention of challenging CitizensUnited. Why would they? Most of them benefit from the current rule set (well, more like think they do, turns out there's a limit on what money can buy, despite the record amount of money wasted on the 2012 elections... Spending did not necessarily deliver massive results).

So a number of private groups decided you had to go around Congress. Honestly the idea was that if the federal government ever did get to isolated and detached from the rest of the country (which the founders worried more about then the they did the state governments being inept and corrupt) the people could use the state governments to call it to hell. It didn't really work that way, but the tool is still sitting there. They're not the only group calling for a convention though, for example in March Geogria passed a law calling for a convention to pass the balanced budget amendment (yeah great idea, that's how we won WWII right? Keeping to a balanced budget at all cost!). *cough* I didn't know about that when I posted this story. Apologies.

Now here's the thing when it comes to a Constitutional Convention?

There are no rules. None. Nothing in the Constitution, nothing in the laws passed by the national government. Nothing. Nadda. Zip. Last time we did it, it was suppose to be a meeting to revise and update the then failing Articles of the Confederation. In what many called a Palace Coup, the founding fathers decided to junk our first government and write the Consititution. The ratification of the Consitution was a national debate where tempers ran high. This is where the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers come from. Now it was a productive debate, the first 10 amendments (AKA The Bill of Rights came from that debate, as a compromise to assure anti-federalist that this wouldn't turn into a government worse then the one they rebelled against. So there's nothing saying that another convention couldn't do the same thing, if they think they can get another vote. So calling a convention is basically throwing everything on the table, which bluntly means everyone has to show up or they'll lose what they care about.

Side Comment: I would point out that realistically, a new Constitution pretty much has to be ratified by everyone. If for example 10 states rejected it, they would have a pretty damn good arguement for leaving the Union, after all everyone else changed the rules of the game on them and that's not what they signed up for. So that's a thing. Back to the main stuff here.

The two current biggest groups are Citizens for Self Government and Wolf PAC. What do they want?

CfSC:

A balanced budget amendment
A redefinition of the General Welfare Clause (the original view was the federal government could not spend money on any topic within the jurisdiction of the states)
A redefinition of the Commerce Clause (the original view was that Congress was granted a narrow and exclusive power to regulate shipments across state lines–not all the economic activity of the nation)
A prohibition of using international treaties and law to govern the domestic law of the United States
A limitation on using Executive Orders and federal regulations to enact laws (since Congress is supposed to be the exclusive agency to enact laws)
Imposing term limits on Congress and the Supreme Court
Placing an upper limit on federal taxation
Requiring the sunset of all existing federal taxes and a super-majority vote to replace them with new, fairer taxes

Wolf-PAC

pressuring our State Representatives to pass a much needed 28th Amendment to our Constitution which would end corporate personhood and publicly finance all elections in our country.

I leave to the reader to decide if any of this is desirable or worth the risk.

[rhoenix]

First, thank you Frigid for that layout of the facts.

Not to loudly proclaim my ignorance here once again (though I'm going to), but... yeah, I evidently need to do more reading, and especially more consideration. I didn't know, for example, that a Constitutional Convention puts EVERYTHING on the table - but that's my fault for not reading up a little on the idea when I heard about it.

I was cautiously supportive of the WolfPAC idea (though not to the point of giving them money, time, or support other than watching some of the videos they put on their channel), but if the requirement for them to get their way basically means that everyone gets to loudly support their ideas too - like the "balanced budget" nonsense that even one as ignorant of the inner workings of politics as I can see as a terrible fucking idea - then yeah, nice idea met the unforgiving brick wall of reality.

[Josh]

I still don't see a coherent vision on their part.

What would they replace corporate personhood with? There's a reason corporations are legally considered to be an entity. As for publicly financed elections, how do you prevent outside money from weighing in, again without trampling the first amendment?

I get the ideal they're striving for here, and I see the problems that exist in the current system. I'd love to offer an alternative that would function with our present society, but I don't really have one.

Historical note: the 'Anti-Federalists' was a nice bit of media/perceptive manipulation by the Federalists. Not everyone who opposed the constitution was against a federal republic, just the federal republic envisioned by the constitution. Among the issues pointed out was the lack of a bill of rights (something that the Federalists often dismissed as a concern because most states had their own bill of rights.)

Later on of course when it became evident very early in the game that a federal government could go all asshole on the party not in power, the need for a bill of rights became nice and evident and so we got one.

[frigidmagi]

As for publicly financed elections, how do you prevent outside money from weighing in, again without trampling the first amendment?

I get the ideal they're striving for here, and I see the problems that exist in the current system. I'd love to offer an alternative that would function with our present society, but I don't really have one.

This is in my opinion, a false dilemma and frankly it buys into the idea that somehow money is speech. Which I disagree with.

Let me point out that there are plenty of states with heavy restrictions on political donations (France, Norway, Germany, Japan... I can keep going) and mostly publicly ficanced campaigns that do so without restricting speech. In fact you could make the arguement that free speech is less limited this way, as under our system, such speech comes with a crippling price tag. I would state that if your system ensures only those with a spare couple million dollars can effectively practice free speech, you have suppressed free speech for anyone who is not wealthy beyond the dreams of most men. This allows a man (or woman) to drown out the voices of much of society, is that free speech? The man with the most benjamens gets to talk and everyone else has to shut up?

An alternative is sitting right in front of you. Hell a number of them are.

As for the corporate personhood, I would state it is time to pare back the rights and priviledges enjoyed by these organizations. We do not extend them the full set of rights we extend a human being for our society to function, nor do I view the effects of doing so to be as desirible. Why not bring it to debate and discuss alternatives?

[Josh]

Oh, I'm totally down with discussing and debating alternatives. I wasn't trying to stifle that at all, because I'd love to hear ideas.

On the question of how other countries pull it off (publicly financed campaigns, etc.) my question is what is their media infrastructure like? Do they have dedicated partisan networks a la Fox?

Money may not be speech, but media presentation is massively influential and I have a hard time seeing how media presentation can be kept from being sculpted by big money. To give an example from a subject near and dear to my heart, CNN was merrily fanning the flames of the Fukushima 'disaster' (to the exclusion of events that actually did kill numerous people in connection to the tsunami) and then cutting to commercials for clean coal.

That's non-targeted example (not aimed at a specific politician, rather it was industry jockeying and propaganda) but translating that to political affairs, how do you prevent companies from pumping money to bias coverage toward politicians and platforms? Our political system is an industry unto itself, probably not comparable with any other representative system in the world, with a dedicated class of people who make a living making sure the money gets funneled toward receptive coverage. Either you specifically target your regulations (and thus create loopholes which the money can maneuver around) or you go heavy blanket and then you get the potential for first amendment damage.

I don't think this is a world-ending problem, but rather a natural product of the design of our system. I'd love to hear more ideas on how to reform it.

As for corporate personhood, the main issue I have there is that a lot of people yell about ending it without understanding the purpose in the first place. A corporation has individual status so that if I get sued they can get my office equipment and not my house.

Now, you pare that down and say companies can't throw money into elections? They'll just find ways to flow around that. That's also another natural product of our system- free market enterprises are built with the idea of going around, over, and straight through obstacles.

To sum up my take on the whole situation: yes, I think that we have bad elements in the current system and we need reform. But I don't want to see half-ass buckshot approaches (McCain-Feingold jumps to mind) that do nothing more than put placebo bandaids on the system or actively damage free expression.